Pet Food Ingredients Alert

PET FOOD ALERT !

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Do you know what's really in your pet's food?

Pet Food Ingredients - Healthy, Useless, or Harmful ?

Common Ingredients In Most Pet Foods

From Best to Worst

3 stars = Best 1 star = Worst

Learn which pet food ingredients are harmful, useless or beneficial- click here.

Pet Food Ingredients A-Z

This website is also a great source of non-conventional information about human health and nutrition.

The Truth About Pet Food Website

Free enewsletter is available as well as a paid subscription that rates pet foods based on the quality of their ingredients.

Is Chicken Meal or Fish Meal a By-Product?

A lawsuit was recently generated against a major pet food manufacturer (which claimed that there were no by-products in its premium pet food) when some of its customers noticed that chicken meal and/or fish meal appeared on the ingredients label. "Meat" meal can be considered to be by-products by AAFCO, the agency that is tasked with monitoring pet foods in the USA.

The chicken meal, turkey meal, and fish meal used by Life's Abundance is 100% pure meat or fish. None of them are by-product meals and they are made from the highest quality meats and fish.

AAFCO considers chicken and fish meal to be by-products because other manufacturers historically have not used pure, 100% meats/fish in their meals- they have included other poor-quality, unsafe ingredients (by-products). The 100% pure chicken or fish meal in Life's Abundance dry pet foods is a concentrated, high-quality source of nutrition that your pet can easily digest. Life's Abundance does not use BY-PRODUCT meals.

Following is an explanation of Chicken & Turkey Meal and Fish Meal, from the manufacturer of Life's Abundance Pet Foods.

Chicken, Turkey, or Fish Meal
Chicken meal contains only chicken. Turkey meal contains only turkey. Fish meal contains only fish. The definition of any meal
must correspond to what is in the meal.
Corn meal contains only corn. The American Association of Feed Control Officials
(AAFCO) has definitions on their site.

Pet Food Meat Processing
When meat is not dried it contains 40-60%
water. The water-logged meat takes up
more room in the nugget than than the meal.Most meats used in the manufacturing of dry
pet foods are “de-boned”, which means that once most of the meat is taken off the
skeleton it is put through a machine to
gather up everything left- which consists
of tendons, ligaments, viscera and a small percentage of muscle meat. This results in a food containing chicken meat and chicken
parts consisting of 40-60% water.

Meat Meal Processing

The object in making a good dry food for
dogs and cats is to put as much healthy
nutrition as possible into every nugget.
When we process meat into meat meal, the

muscles of turkey, fish, chicken and
others are dried, removing most of the
water. Concentrated meals allow us to put
more meat into each nugget.

Meal Quality Varies
There are different grades of meals-
unfortunately, you can’t determine the
quality of meals from the label. We use thebest meals we can get. Our top-quality fishmeal is made by drying the freshest catfishat a low temperature, creating a
concentrated, highly-digestible protein
source. In addition to being an excellent
source of protein, catfish meal provides
natural DHA and EPA, the most important of all the omega-3 fatty acids.

More extensive ingredient information can be found by clicking on the links to the left.

Harmful Ingredients

Animal By-Products: A "by-product" is basically any part of an animal, usually the parts that humans would not touch, eat or even want to see- and would most likely NOT want to feed to their pets. Here are a few common examples of a "by-product": Beaks, feet, feathers, blood, heads, and random organs. If the label says "chicken by-products" then at least you know which animal this stuff came from- but more commonly the label will show "meat by-products", which does not tell you exactly what animal they're using in there. This is because it's been documented that roadkill and even rats are used in some cheap pet foods.

Animal Digest: "Animal Digest" is a broth that's cooked up of stuff we'd rather not know about- see the by-products description above to get the basic idea. Animal digest may also include things such as skin and the contents of the animal's stomach after it was slaughtered.

Beef Tallow: Cheap pet food companies use beef tallow because it's very cheap. Beef tallow is a terrible fat source for pets and humans, as it is very greasy & difficult to digest. It's especially tough for older animals to process through their systems.

Canola Oil: Although this is a very common fat in pet foods, it does absolutely nothing for an animal and may be difficult to digest.

Meat and Bone Meal: The origin of the meat is not named because they don't want you to know that it is one of the lowest quality meat products used. They grind up the lowest-quality parts of the animal; ground bone may contain excessive amounts of fluoride.

Natural Flavors: There are varying reports about natural flavors. Some of the more expensive companies claim that they use the broth that is created when the animals are being cooked, but the bargain manufacturers are known to use other methods to get these flavors.

Salt: This should NOT be included in a pet food, definitely not in high amounts. Excess salt is usually used to make up for something else that it is missing.

Soybeans: Soybeans, for all of their recent popularity, are actually a lower-quality grain and a source of many food allergies. It's a cheap ingredient typically used by cheap companies with little benefit to animals.

Useless Ingredients

Brewers rice or brewers yeast: The remains of the alcohol-making process, which is bought very cheaply by the pet food companies. It is considered to be a "filler" because it has no nutritional value- all of it has already been extracted in the alcohol making process.

Healthy Ingredients

Eggs: Eggs are one of the best protein sources. The best is "whole eggs", but "dried eggs" or "egg product" is still a fairly good protein source.

Fish Oil: This includes salmon oil. Fish oil is very rich in Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids, which are absolutely excellent for heart health. This is one of the best fat sources available in pet foods.

Flaxseed Oil: Flaxseed oil is another great fat source, with Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids. Cheap foods almost never have this ingredient.

Fruits: Animals benefit from fruits just as humans do. As excellent sources of fiber and vitamins, blueberries, cranberries, and apples. are included in the more expensive foods.

Meats (chicken, turkey, duck, etc.): Any time a meat is named on the label, it's of better quality than a product that just says "meat by-product". If the word "meal" is not behind it, it was weighed before it was dehydrated, which gives it a false ranking of the proportion of the meat that is actually in the food (dry food).

Meat "meals" (chicken meal, turkey meal, fish meal, etc): One of the best ingredients you can see in a pet food, this means that the meat is of good quality and was weighed after being dehydrated. Meat meal is condensed protein- it is protein & nutrient dense. This ingredient should be at or near the top of the ingredient list.

Oatmeal: A good grain, similar in quality to barley and rice. Generally found in more expensive foods.

Potatoes (or sweet potatoes): The single best carb source in pet foods.

Rice (or whole grain rice): Rice is easily digestible, and a good source of fiber for animals. It's generally considered to be the best grain for inclusion in pet food. Rice "bran" or "flour" is not the same as rice, due to the diminished nutritional value caused by the additional processing of the rice.